'That guy' became my IT guy

By Roy Bragg :
February 28, 2013
: Updated: March 1, 2013 11:30am

I remember when desktop computers were new. The images roll by, as if part of a Ken Burns documentary, with the camera slowly panning across black-and-white photos of perplexed workers gathered at desks. Their pained faces stare into the distance, crying for help.

But it was 1993, and there was none.

Years of watching the Jetsons and Star Trek had given people the mistaken impression that computers were lifelike, smart and helpful. Little did they know that those assumptions, even to this day, were wrong, wrong and wrong.

The American worker knew how to turn on a PC and hit keys. If the right thing didn't happen — which was often — they'd hit more keys angrily and whine, their painful cries of frustration echoing across the cubicle farm.

Even before the Decade of Production Lost, when workers discovered eBay, Drudge, I Can Haz Cheeseburger and even the Hamster Dance, computers were silent workplace assassins.

In this newsroom, computers which had been brought in to speed up work instead brought in another level of anxiety. No document had ever been vaporized by an Underwood typewriter, but computers did it all of the time. And usually on deadline.

Then he arrived.

A moderately sized, long-haired stranger appeared out of nowhere. This cat played by his own rules. He subverted authority. Working outside of the system, he set the office free.

There was no IT department to miraculously fix stuff over the phone. There were some computer techs, but devoid of network control and bereft of power, they were tough guys who didn't have bullets in their guns.

And then, in the spring of 19-and-94, the shaggy-haired stranger went to work.

A year before, through trial and error, he learned basic DOS and some Windows 3.5 command line prompts — at this point, I've lost most of you, right? — and he had pimped his home computer.

Like Ayn Rand's John Galt or the Javelin Thrower in the original Macintosh ad, he knew that computers should empower people and set them free. Unlike John Galt or the Javelin woman, he also thought computers should give him free stuff, too.

Armed with his convictions, a distrust of authority and some info he had found via Alta Vista and Web Crawler, he set about to change the world, one computer at a time.

Hold down these three buttons to find programs to shut down, he would tell a flummoxed editor. Rebooting, he would tell reporters, would fix almost everything. Save early and often, he would announce to the newsroom, or risk losing stories to the Dark Lord of Unnecessary Swearing.

To colleagues, he was Mr. Computer Fix-It. To the IT guys, he was trouble. They hated him.

Like Harry Tuttle, the rogue air conditioner repairman in Terry Gilliam's “Brazil,” he made things work without filling out the necessary paperwork.

Little did he know that he was one of many. At the newspaper, he was “that guy.”

But there were other “that guys,” in offices everywhere. And now, Crucial.com, a maker of computer components, is holding a contest to honor “that guy,” i.e. The Crucial Superstar of your office.

“Remarkably unfazed by unrelenting blue screens of death, spinning beach balls and hourglasses, vanishing computer files ... and other regular office computer mishaps,” the company's promotional material states, “it is these everyday heroes that keep their co-workers on the right side of sanity.”

Every office with a computer, says Crucial's Ed Walker, has “that guy.”

“Even though we're a tech company,” Walker says, “we have that guy. “We make DRAM and SSD — more computer terms; nothing to see here — but when we have a meeting and can't get the overheard projector to work, we call that guy.”

At Crucial, that guy knows how to get the printer to work. “He's the Swiss Army Knife of Our Office,” Walker says.

Nominate your rogue nerd at CrucialSuperstar..com. The winner gets $5,000 and the office gets $5,000 in technology upgrades through BestBuy.com.

And if you're “that guy” who wins, remember everyone who made it all possible: your computer illiterate co-workers, Harry Tuttle, and the other “that guys” everywhere.